Receiving emails
Receive email on your domain and process it in your application.
usend can receive email for your domain. Every message sent to any address at the domain is stored, shown on the Inbound page of the dashboard, available through the API, and delivered to your application as an email.received webhook.
Use it for support inboxes, reply handling, email-to-ticket flows or anything else that starts with an incoming email.
1. Verify the domain
Receiving works on verified domains only.
2. Enable receiving
Turn on Receiving on the domain's page in the dashboard, or with the API:
curl -X PATCH https://api.usend.et/domains/d91cd9bd-1176-453e-8fc1-35364d380206 \
-H "Authorization: Bearer us_123456789" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "receiving_enabled": true }'3. Add the MX record
The domain now lists a Receiving record. On usend.et it is:
| Name | Type | Value | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
@ | MX | inbound-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com | 10 |
usend.et receives email through Amazon SES, which is why the MX points at an Amazon host.
An MX record decides where all email for that name goes. If your domain already receives email with another provider (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365...), pointing its MX at usend moves all of that email to usend. Use a dedicated subdomain instead, such as inbound.acme.com: add and verify it as its own domain, then enable receiving on it.
usend checks the MX record like the other records. Receiving is optional, so its status does not affect sending from the domain.
4. Get notified
Create a webhook subscribed to email.received. Each received message triggers one event with the sender, recipients, subject, text and HTML bodies and the attachment list. See Receiving webhook.
How it works
- usend accepts mail for every address at the domain (
support@,orders+42@, anything). Use the recipient address to route the message in your application. - Mail for addresses on domains without receiving enabled is dropped.
- Messages up to 40 MB are accepted.
- Messages are kept for your plan's data retention period.
Read received emails
| Action | Endpoint |
|---|---|
| List received emails | GET /inbound/emails |
| Get one, with bodies, headers and attachments | GET /inbound/emails/{id} |
Download the original message (.eml) | GET /inbound/emails/{id}/raw |
| Download an attachment | GET /inbound/emails/{id}/attachments/{attachment_id} |
See the Received emails API reference and Receiving attachments.